Daily Archives: December 4, 2010

FIFA is of political interest because it vividly demonstrates what happens in supra-national organisations. These are invariably (1) undemocratic because they are convened by elites who make all the rules and decisions without democratic interference and (2) corrupt, the degree of corruption increasing with the width of the international spread. In FIFA’s case the international spread is as wide as can be, with 208 affiliated nations, marginally more than the UN which numbers 192. The corruption is consequently massive.

If a bidding process for a massive public project was taking place in Britain, there would be definite criteria laid down so that bidders would know what was required. If the bidding process was shown to be incorrectly or corruptly handled there would be recourse to the law for civil remedies and the possibility of criminal prosecutions. FIFA being answerable to no one in practice, there is no such recourse.

What applies to FIFA is applicable to the UN and the EU. Join any body which is not under national control and there is no national control which means democratic accountability does not exist.

There is another repellent aspect to the FIFA bidding process: the kow towing of politicians not only in grovelling personally when they meet with the FIFA executive members, but their willingness to allow FIFA to dictate what special tax, immigration and legal arrangements are put in place for the World Cup finals .

England should remain within FIFA and try to lead a revolt against the current executive including taking the lead in investigating corrupt practices within FIFA and producing a bidding process for future world cups which is based on objective criteria.

It is worth staying and fighting to change FIFA because there is both a chance of effecting change and there is no great risk in doing so. The same cannot be said of Britain’s membership of the EU which by the nature of its organisation and controlling personnel will continue to leach away what sovereignty is left to Britain. It is also a deeply corrupt body. The only cure is departure.

As for the UN, this is a body which the world would be better without as it is comprised overwhelmingly of authoritarian governments including many vicious despotisms. In its entire history it has never resolved a serious international situation, but has acted a s a justifying fig leaf for powerful nations to act militarily. Nor is it capable of tackling the corruption within it and the various bodies such as UNECEF and the IMF to which it is tied one way or another. It is also the prime engine of the liberal internationalists, who represent a threat to sovereignty of states such as Britain. However, it would not be in Britain’s interest to leave for one simple reason: we are one of the five permanent members who can veto any proposal. This allows Britain to protect itself against any future UN sanctioned action. It could also provide a lever to bring the whole edifice down if the veto was used in a way to block the will of powerful nations.

The general differences between societies plausibly express the societal differences in IQ: the more complex the society the greater the need for IQ related problem solving; the less complex, the greater the reliance on knowledge based behaviour. That is not to say that complex societies do not rely greatly on knowledge or that the simplest society allows no room for reasoning. Rather, it is that the balance between IQ related problem solving and knowledge is differs according to the nature of the society. If IQ is largely innate this raises some immensely difficult moral questions for any society. Take away sentiment and the hard truth is that on rational grounds no white or Asian society would want to host a large black population because that will substantially lower the average IQ of the society, with all the problems that brings in terms of anti-social behaviour and the loss of national intellectual capacity.

To say that the IQ distribution of a race implies nothing at the individual level may be pedantically true but it does not alter the fact that if a low IQ race is present in substantial numbers most will have low IQs. In a high IQ society that is a problem for such individuals because there is less opportunity to lead a normal life for the low IQ individual. Self-evidently There is not “a place for everyone”.

Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen provide a clear message: some societies, and most particularly those with a predominately black population, simply do not have sufficient people with IQs high enough to sustain a modern society. There are two rational conclusions to draw from their work. The first is that it is pointless for advanced states to keep on trying to modernise countries with low IQ populations which cannot sustain the sophisticated societies needed to maintain an advanced modern state and those populations should be left to find their own level.

The second is that the only active intervention which might conceivably improve conditions in low IQ states is their formal re-colonisation and permanent administration by the advanced states, for that at least would bring order and societies which had infrastructure which worked.

The first course of action has the difficulty of seeming cruel at worst and heartless at best. The second is a political non-starter because of the sacrifices those in the advanced states would have to make in terms of money and personnel and the almost certain guerrilla resistance of at least part of any population which was subject to an attempt at re-colonisation.

Lynn and Vanhanen’s remedy for the problem is the half-way house between decolonisation and doing nothing. They advocate transfers of wealth and expertise from advanced high IQ societies to the IQ deficient ones. Not only is this profoundly unlikely to be something the populations of advanced states will tolerate for ever, but the experience of 40 years or more of vast amounts of Aid being poured into low IQ countries shows that such assistance is worse than useless because it invariably produces corrupt regimes and large Aid dependent populations.

If Lynn and Vanhanen are right, the cold reality is that there is currently no way of radically changing the nature of low IQ societies. Indeed, by feeding them with Aid the donors are making matters worse because they help to increase the low IQ populations vastly beyond the level at which a viable society for the population could exist. However, low IQ populations may not be forever because even if IQ is now substantially innate it may not be so in the future. It is probable that within the next fifty years genetic engineering, chemical manipulation, surgical alteration and cybernetics may provide humans with the capacity to raise the IQ of those with low IQs. This would of course raise immense moral questions as well as practical difficulties such as who would provide the expertise and materials needed to change the IQ of hundreds of millions of people.

Other things being equal, the vast majority of adults would seek the highest IQ for their child, or if the alteration could done after birth at any age, to seek the highest IQ for themselves and their children. It is also true that in a society where there was any meaningful democratic expression it would be impossible for a government to deny such engineering to those who wanted it.

But it probably would not be left to the individual. If some states positively insist on altering the IQ of their entire populations, this would lead to fears that any country which did not follow suit would be left behind in the competitive struggle between societies. Alternatively, manipulation of IQ could be selfishly used by elites to create a permanent advantage for them. Not a pretty future to contemplate.